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What if more water storage is good for the environment?

For all the talk about climate change and the hand-wringing that we need to do something about it right now, or else, the one thing California farmers have been clamoring for continues to be passed off as irresponsible.

In a blog by Jeremy Proville, a senior GIS specialist and economic analyst for the Environmental Defense Fund, it is predicted that California could expect a seven-degree rise in average temperatures by 2080 that could be coupled with a significant decline in average rainfall.

Let’s not argue right now about how hot or cold the temperature may become in the next 60 years, but instead look at something we can all get behind.

Proville writes that food security and our land are inextricably linked. On this we agree. Food security is vital to our existence as human beings. So too is a sustainable source of water. I’ve talked about this before as not just a basic human issue, but one of U.S. national security and sovereignty.

While he points to the inevitability of catastrophic warming – a seven-degree rise in average temperatures is arguably catastrophic – arguing the hyperbole of global warming will be to miss the point that he gets to but doesn’t say out loud.

Proville’s analysis leaves us with the takeaway, but no solution, that “we must get our act together” if we’re “to endure more droughts and hardships.”

While he suggests that “California is leading the way when it comes to tackling climate change,” one can argue the success California will have if capturing more water for a growing population is not a significant part of the solution that has already proven to work.

Pointing to problems without the leadership of worthy solutions and the drive to achieve them is irresponsible pandering.

Let’s say for a moment the global warming alarmists are right and that it’s going to get much hotter and much drier. Wouldn’t it be good to build more water storage and conveyance systems to capture this precious resource for humans and the food we must grow to sustain ourselves? Conservation alone will not solve the challenges brought on by increased populations.

Even if they’re wrong and it doesn’t warm as dramatically and our climate continues to ebb and flow between drought and plenty, having the facilities and conveyance to store and move water to more human beings will still be a good thing.

Either way, more water storage and conveyance is a win-win for the environment and humans alike.